NICTA GiFi chip takes a gong

A Gigabit wireless transceiver developed by NICTA has taken out an Innovic Next Big Thing award for innovation excellence.

The GiFi chip delivers short-range multi-gigabit data transfer in an indoor environment, researchers said.

"Imagine being able to download a movie to your mobile phone from a kiosk in 30 seconds, then going home, transferring it to your TV in another 30 seconds and being able to watch it," said NICTA's gigabit wireless project leader Stan Skafidas.

"That's what this tiny five millimetre by five millimetre technology can do."

Skafidas shared the award with 15 researchers from the national ICT centre of excellence and industry collaborators who he said "worked tirelessly on the development and testing of the GiFI chip over the past four years".

The first public demonstration of a prototype using the 60GHz GiFi chip was in February.

The awards night winner was MycroLab Diagnostics for a handheld medical diagnostics system that enables anyone to perform mobile lab tests for early detection of diseases, without the delay of waiting for a lab result.

Innovic is an Australian not-for-profit organisation and a provider of services to innovators, inventors, entrepreneurs and small to medium enterprises.